Weekend Fun: London, Stonehenge, Bath & Copenhagen

London

Well, the time has finally come, throw away the scarves (but maybe not the coats just yet) because it's spring time in London!!! Suddenly, as if from nowhere, the sun has come out and everything about this city is so much happier and brighter, people are actually out on the street and wearing colours again. It's fantastic!

We have been getting outdoors and going out as much as possible to make the most of the spring atmosphere. 

In April, along with our friends Dave and Georgia, Michael and I headed to the fanciest restaurant we have ever set foot in - Sushi Samba! We had to book three months in advance and still only got a table on a Sunday evening. I had been hearing nothing but fantastic things about this restaurant and having never been to a super fancy restaurant before I was pretty excited. 

We got an amazing table - check out the view of central London!

We started with a round of cocktails - Michael got a man cocktail, which he says was amazing and I got the worlds most fancy take on an espresso martini (my fave!)

The whole idea of this restaurant is to order a lot of small-ish plates to share among your table, I love this idea cos it means I get to try everything! Below from top to bottom is: edamame beans with volcanic rock salt, shrimp tempura and salt and pepper squid. I am aware that none of these sound fancy but they were honestly amazing, especially the shrimp tempura - yum!

Of course, some more mandatory photos of our amazing view as the sun set over eastern London!

More food to share!

Below we have some sushi rolls (the combinations of which I cannot remember but they tasted amazing), pork belly (one of the favourites of the night), wagyu gyoza and at the bottom yellowtail with lemongrass - they were all absolutely amazing!

Below is probably the most amazing dish I will ever have in my life and a well know Sushi Samba dish: black cod (which is not black), it was absolutely delicious!

A lovely, albeit slightly fuzzy, shot of our group at dinner. We were lucky enough to be facing towards the window, with an amazing view as the sun began to set. 

Second cocktail of the night and totally worth it, this was probably the strangest but most delicious cocktail I have ever had - it was pistachio and avocado with  a basket of nuts on the top! Very strange but tasted amazing!

To finish, some photos of out desserts. The pink one was a red hot chocolate dessert, it was strange as it was hot and tasted slightly like capsicums, sounds weird but the more we ate the more it grew on us! The other dish was a mixture of mouse, ganache and macadamia - I can't remember the exact combination but it was all incredible!

Unfortunately it was hard to get a good shot because the light kept reflecting off the window but this is a pretty good one of East London all lit up at night, this is looking north towards Shoreditch and Dalston (which is the neighborhood we currently live in). 

After we had the most delicious meals of our lives we wandered around to the upstairs bar and had a look at the view, behind Michael and I is a building called the Gherkin. At the top is an insanely expensive restaurant, this building is a pretty big feature of the London skyline. 

Some pictures of the bar and the bright orange tree we couldn't stop looking at!

The pictures on the right are of us in the glass elevator that runs down the side of the building. It is an all glass elevator and flies up and down the side of this huge building. I found it quite terrifying!

From our lavish Sushi Samba experience, we head to our local area for some more London fun!

Michael and I have recently discovered the Regeant Canals in London - they run from Kings Cross all the way to Victoria park and are beautiful to walk along! There are actually lots of canals running all through London but I like these ones because they are walking distance from home!

We have headed here a few times and grabbed brunch along the way, I have jogged along here, it's definitely one of my favourite outdoor spaces in London!

Below is a lovely shot of Michael walking along the canal - not a person in sight, pretty hard to believe this is in central London!

Another green space I am a huge fan of is London Fields - our local park!

We have visited here and had picnics several times since the sun has started to emerge! I walk through here as often as possible because it's such a beautiful park and always full of people enjoying the outdoors!

Aaaaannnd some more food related pictures! 

We seriously are eating and drinking our way around this city and I am really loving it haha!

Michael and I have been enjoying a spot of brunch around London lately, a favourite brunch cafe that we tried was called Trade Made in Spitalfields, about a 20 min bus ride away but worth it!

On this particular day we both enjoyed some lovely coffee and I got a delicious breakfast called Green Eggs and Ham (haha), while Michael went for his tried and true favourite; blueberry pancakes - it was delish!

Sunday Lunch: a favourite British tradition! Michael and I haven't actually been to a Sunday lunch since we first arrived over a year ago (wow) so we headed down to a local pub for a Sunday Roast! Michael had an amazing pork roast and I had a not so amazing, but still alright, roast duck.

The food was pretty good and thanks to the wait staff forgetting our order we even got 50% off the bill - I will take that!

A few weekends ago a lovely friend of mine called Blair was in town for the weekend!

We went to a mexican restaurant one evening for some cheap cocktails, shots (no tequila for me) and laughs with some of her other friends. 

Myself and some of her other lovely female friends, headed to a fancy hotel in Holbourn on the Saturday afternoon for high tea! I have been wanting to do this for ages but never got around to it so I was super keen!

We each got out own pot of tea and the top two layers on the tray (?), ie. pastries and scones, were unlimited!!!! The sandwiches were probably my favourite, there was amazing chicken one that was baked on some kind of nutty bread that was delicious and of course the old egg sandwich = yum!

Thanks to the unlimited scones and pastries we quite literally spent the whole afternoon here grazing on food that is definitely not good for you (so worth it though).

From high tea to an even more glamorous event!

On the last weekend in May I headed to an event called Love Brunch with my house mate Lucy and some of her friends. This event was on a London rooftop right near St Pauls cathedral and basically involved drinking on the rooftop with plenty of fabulous and rich people!

Of course it was mandatory for Lucy and I to mix up some delicious home made espresso martinis before we headed off!

We got really lucky because the weather was beautiful - perfect day for a rooftop event. We arrived right on time, the promise of free drinks and canapes was definitely a huge motivation. As soon as we arrived one of Lucy's lovely friends Sunni became instant besties with the bar tender and we scored A LOT of free drinks (5 rounds each - score!)

The photo on the top right is the rooftop with all the pretty people!

Enjoying a delicious and free drink and enjoying the warm London weather!

Below is Sunni and I loving those free drinks! She also managed to score free sunglasses from her bartender friend (Garrrryyyy). On the left is the view of St Pauls Cathedral - beautiful view from the rooftop, you can actually head up here at anytime as it is a free viewing platform so I might be back!

A group picture with Lucy's fabulous friends: Mel, Kirsty and Sunni - a lovely bunch of ladies who made the day fun!

A few more shots of the event, our champagne, which was quickly devoured and some free drinks and free alcoholic icy poles! They were delicious and each had a fair amount of alcohol in them! There were also skinny half naked dancing girls on the bars - classy!?

The drinks were flowing and the dancing had started!

Some more rooftop shots, I love the one of Lucy and I with St Pauls Cathedral in the background! I have never actually been inside this church before but it is beautiful from the outside! We were really lucky to have a sun filled, drink filled, fun filled day!

Another shot of St Pauls Cathedral - gorgeous view!

The girls getting classy on our way out of the venue!

Stonehenge & Bath

Before I begin I will say that we definitely copped the worst weather in the entire month to go visit Stonehenge and Bath! You will have to excuse the not-so-stylish looks we are sporting because it was seriously horrific. 

To get you started: this is Stonehenge. 

Pretty unexciting huh!?

If you add some giant rocks, an empty field together with bucketing rain and hurricane winds, it has the potential to a day fairly miserable. As you can see from the photos below we tried to suit up and make the most of it - as you can see from Michael's completely hilarious facial expressions it was pretty unbearable. 

I might have gotten a little hysterical..

Above right is a lovely shot of us, avoiding the weather, in the little musem type thing they had right near the exit - the only thing I learned is that nobody actually knows anything of any real significance about Stonehenge but everyone is insanely curious about it!

Thankfully, we left the horrible weather and headed off to Bath, where the weather was also bad but not completely horrific - ahhh England.

This is a very lovely picture of Michael in the historic town of Bath, the Pulteney Bridge is in the background - apparently this is a site where Les Miserables was filmed (I have not seen it but apparently one of the characters jumps off this bridge).

From here we headed to the most famous site in Bath; The Romans Baths. This is a completely natural site for hot springs and was discovered by the Romans - they used it as a public bath site and used to come here to bathe. 

These are supposedly the best preserved ancient baths and temples in Northern Europe - the water was quite warm (we did touch it) and according to the ancient Romans could cure all kinds of illnesses and ailments - it is pure water, you an even taste some while you are here (heads up: it tasted disgusting).

Some photos of us outside the main bath - there are apparently lots of others but this is the main one open to the public. Apparently the King had his own private bath. 

Copenhagen

The last weekend in was a bank holiday in London, so we decided to take full advantage of this and take  weekend trip to Copenhagen, Denmark! I have never really been to Northern Europe or anywhere in Scandinavia so I was excited to check it out. 

After a series of flight delays we arrived almost two hours late, it was pretty late at night so all we wanted to do was make it to our rented apartment. The first thing we noticed after walking from the train station is how trusting everyone in Copenhagen is, they just leave bikes everywhere, not chained to anything and with dodgy little locks to keep them safe. We were amazed, if that was to happen in London the bike would be stolen or destroyed for sure!

The above photo is the view from out cute apartment in Fredriksberg.

The first thing we did the next morning was head out for breakfast, as the result of a recommendation from a friend we ended up at a super cute cafe called The Laundromat - they actually have coin laundry machines and you can get some breakfast or drinks while you wait, cool idea, Copenhagen is so efficient!

I really loved the counter as it was filled with books and I love anything that is filled with books. 

From here we met up with my lovely friend Bryce, who I met in Budapest and is now studying in Copenhagen, he took us on a kind of 'local tour' of Copenhagen, if you will. 

We headed to Christiania, a small suburb in Copenhagen, also known as the 'green district' aka. home of marijuana. Once you get inside you aren't allowed to take photos but we took a snap of us standing outside the district - on the other side of this sign, as you exit Christiania it says "you are now entering the EU".... this is a little dubious!

Once you pass this sign and enter the 'green district' there are tons of weed stalls - it is really hard to describe and obviously I couldn't take any photos. 

Weed is completely illegal here but the police seem to leave this little section alone because apparently it brings in a quite a lot of money and tourism. Once you walk in there are heaps of stalls, all of them are covered with camouflage type material and there is only a small hole or section where the seller appears to sell you the weed. All the dealers were wearing sunglasses, masks, beanies or scarves over their mouths so you could not identify them. It seemed really dodgy and kinda surreal but there were plenty of people wandering around very casually and it was very non-threatening, despite my somewhat dodgy description. 

After my friends made a purchase we wandered around Christiania a little, the walking trails are actually quite beautiful, we wandered through a beautiful green park area that surrounded a big lake before stopping for a while.

From here we headed to Copenhagen Street Food, which I stupidly did not take any photos of!

That night we spent the night with Bryce and his friends, unbelievably enough playing a MKR (My Kitchen Rules) drinking game - yes it exists and yes it is awesome!

The next day, after a long sleep in and battling with fairly severe headaches Michael and I headed off to do a little exploring of our own. After walking along and watching the Copenhagen marathon for a while (man, I did not have that much energy) we headed to Nyhavn. This is a small district based on one of the canals in Copenhagen.

Nyhavn is a super touristy, therefore expensive, area in Copenhagen and is mostly famous for the colour 17th century buildings that line the canals. The canals are lined with restaurants and cafes and the small streets were filled with people enjoying the sunshine and having a meal.

Instead of spending all of our money at an expensive cafe we decided to take a more local approach. We stopped by a supermarket and bought so local fruit, cheeses and meats and had a picnic in the park! It was a beautiful sunny day ad this option seemed much cheaper and equally delicious! 

This particular park was called Orstedparken and was absolutely beautiful, the park surrounded a lovely big lake and was filled with other people who had the same idea as we did!

Some more photos above of the gorgeous park, it was super green and seemed perfect!

Later that night we were lucky enough to have a beautiful sunset at our Copenhagen apartment, bonus!

Unfortunately I did a REALLY bad job of taking photos on this trip! The picture below is of Michael sitting in yet another beautiful park, this was named: Fredriksberg park - we sat here before meeting some friends for a BBQ and some drinks. 

Although we didn't do a whole lot of anything we did have an amazing, relaxing time in Copenhagen and although it was on the expensive side I would definitely recommend a visit!

We don't have any more trips planned until August - which leaves us with two months of solid London fun! We do have a lot of fun events planned in London, including lots more eating and a trip to the Ascot Races in late June. The weather is getting more summery so we are planning on getting outdoors and enjoying the brief London summer!
xx